by Andie Weber

(image from ArchDaily c/o Utile and Reed Hildebrand)

Transcript of Annual Shareholder Meeting – January 12, 2029

Cody Ryan: “Thank you all for joining us here today to celebrate what has been a truly momentous year at ArtTelligence. We’ve been on a historic run—record profits quarter over quarter, an unbelievable number of patents submitted and approved in the last three months alone… I guess I should have listened to all those economists five years ago who said the A.I. bubble would burst, after all.”

[Affirming laughter from the crowd]

C. Ryan: “But seriously, folks, we couldn’t have done this without you and your continued belief in us and our product. I like to think we’ve rewarded your faith with a wide selection of high quality products—AIsisstant, and the massive 3.0 upgrade of our flagship product Prometheus Studio, to name just a couple from the last fiscal year.”

[Cheers]

C. Ryan: “Stop, you’re going to make me blush. I really need to shout out our ultra-talented developers and product teams, who are out here quite literally making dreams a reality. We owe you a pizza party for sure.”

[Silence]

C. Ryan: “Speaking of dreams becoming a reality, I am so excited to announce our newest product. The team has been working super hard on this one, and I think it’s paid off. What we’re about to unleash is going to change life, and death, as we think of it. Allow me to introduce you to AfterLife.”

When Steven was little, Holly had always felt that she could read his mind. Then again, mind reading wasn’t strictly necessary; most seven-year-olds are pretty vocal about what they want. Candy bars, LEGO bricks, the glitter glue and borax to make that tactile slime that had captivated his generation for a while there. But she could usually tell what was making him unhappy, even when he wouldn’t say. That was how, in first grade, she’d known he was dyslexic well before his teachers—a sense that all was not well at school that he worked hard to hide, even as he struggled to keep up with his peers in reading. She’d always had an aptitude for guessing what video games he would want even if he didn’t tell her, for knowing when her painfully shy son was simply feeling lazy or when he really needed a day to play hooky from school and recover.

She was caught entirely off-guard when he took his own life. She hadn’t been expecting it, hadn’t suspected that he was anything less than neutrally satisfied with his day-to-day. She hadn’t known that he was being bullied at school and over his much-loved computer. She never would have guessed that he would be willing to leave her without saying goodbye. But he didn’t give any indication of what was coming before it came, and he didn’t leave a note. One day she came home from work, and her little boy was gone.

Holly had always wondered what it would be like to lose a child. Devastating, that much she had expected, but she hadn’t entirely anticipated how much self-loathing she would feel, and how much anger toward Steven. The resentment amplified the regret, but she couldn’t stop feeling it. Yes, she’d failed him, but hadn’t he also failed to ask for help? Why had he never said anything, and why had he chained himself to that vile screen if there was so much vitriol coming through it? For days, and then weeks, Holly cried and screamed into her pillow and stared at the ceiling, and no amount of thinking about it could ever really resolve the confusion and hurt and frustration that beat at the walls of her skull. The only person who could answer her questions was gone, and he hadn’t been too eager to provide enlightenment on the topic even when he’d been around.

C. Ryan: “AfterLife is truly groundbreaking, not just on a technological level, but on a philosophical one too. Individuals can set up profiles at any time in advance of their passing, the earlier the better. By feeding in text logs, emails, and even phone recordings, we can replicate the conversation patterns of the user such that, after death, they can continue to communicate with loved ones—at least as long as there’s a valid card on file. Now, you don’t have to say goodbye.”

When she heard about AfterLife, Holly signed up immediately. It was almost a year since Steven died, and her life still felt as unmoored as it had in those first days. But the program promised connection, support, and most importantly, closure. She signed onto the computer that Steven had left—the only one they’d had in the house since she’d never really felt the need for one before—and made an AfterLife account. She checked off approval of the terms and conditions without reviewing the attached 60-page file. The portal prompted her to provide texts, emails, chat logs, phone recordings, voicemails. She didn’t have the password to Steven’s email, and she’d gotten rid of his phone, unable to look at it without thinking of the horrible messages he’d gotten from his classmates. So she provided what little she retained—a couple of essays he’d written for school gathering digital dust in the computer’s file folders, and some texts that she had saved to her phone, and she proceeded with a certain amount of hope that the program could still work the kind of miracle she’d been promised.

She quickly realized it was not to be. Her first message, delivered to her phone an hour after the algorithm had the opportunity to work over the data and establish a persona, left her cold, jaw agape at a text that had to be some kind of cruel joke.

Steven Petersen: sup bitch

C. Ryan: “Let’s touch on what you can expect as shareholders. Because to be clear, we’re not just introducing features because they’re cool, we’re doing it to make you some money.”

[Cheers]

C. Ryan: “Yeah, now I’m speaking your language. And AfterLife is the hottest new word in profits. This isn’t just your average chatbot, it’s bigger, better, and way more lucrative—and with the projections our finance department has put together, I can assure you this money-making snowball isn’t going to stop rolling anytime soon.”

Holly would later learn that, when provided with insufficient source material, the algorithm would pull from a repository of communications corresponding to the persona’s demographic. For fifteen-year-old white males, this generally meant video game chat logs and messages to other teenage boys. Her Steven, as shy and enigmatic as he had been, was replaced by a bot that spoke mostly in indiscernible slang and an extensive collection of slurs. Holly had come to recognize the gulf of misunderstanding that had existed between herself and her son, but she was still certain that the messages were in no way authentic to who he had been when alive. And this could have been well and good, a simple case for shutting down the persona and saving money on the ridiculous fees charged by the service.

But every now and again, Holly would get a message that bore such a resemblance to Steven that it reached right down her throat and pulled her heart back up. One in particular, she had screenshotted so that she could look back at it from time to time. She had been about to give up on AfterLife, and in one last attempt at even an ounce of closure, she asked the bot why he’d done it, why he’d left her like that.

SP: i felt so empty mom. i couldn’t keep doing it aynmore i’m sorry. love you miss you.

And there he was. Down to the spelling error, somehow untouched by autocorrect—a little idiosyncrasy of his that she’d gotten used to seeing in texts asking her to call him in sick in the mornings when she was already clocked in at the hospital, or begging her to pick up pizza on the way home. With shaking hands, hardly able to read what she was drafting back through eyes so blurred by tears, Holly had swiftly responded.

HP: I wish you would’ve told me. I would’ve listened. I miss you and I love you so much, baby.

SP: lol you wish

Holly knew she was dating herself to even think it, but she couldn’t help but feel like kids had gotten crueler. She didn’t even know what to say in response. God—she thought, probing the lines etched into her face with tentative fingers—she had gotten so old almost without realizing it. She had measured her age by Steven for so long that she wondered with horror if he had been the one tethering her to the rest of the world, if she might now start to get older with such haste that she’d become entirely irrelevant in a matter of days. Or worse, if she might just stop aging altogether, suspended in time. 

A ding, another message –

SP: suck it loser

C. Ryan: “Let me paint a picture of one of the ways we’re going to start raking in the cash for you, our lovely shareholders. Imagine one of your closest loved ones. Someone you can’t imagine living without.” 

[Pause to allow the audience to reflect]

C. Ryan: “Now imagine that person is taken from you without warning. A heart attack, a car accident. You don’t have a chance to tell them you love them one last time—God forbid, to apologize for any arguments you may have had.”

[Another pause for thought, the room now totally silent]

C. Ryan: “Now imagine that, even after their passing, you can speak with them again. You can let them know how much you care, and you can say goodbye. Closure. AfterLife is offering that opportunity. With our proprietary algorithms, we can reproduce with lifelike accuracy the communication style, the vocabulary, the beloved idioms and catchphrases of your lost loved one. We can bring your favorite person back to life, so that you never have to feel the pain of loose ends.”

Holly couldn’t account for the moments of lucidity in the midst of the horrific mess of it all. Sometimes it felt like a miracle, like her baby boy really was reaching out from beyond the pale to communicate something to her, even as the rest of the communication log became clogged with expletives. So she kept paying the fees, even through the guilty twinges when she considered how little she could afford them on her nurse assistant salary, especially after all the funeral and posthumous costs. She kept slogging through the entirely horrific conversation with the thing that was simply an amalgamation of a bunch of nasty little boys, none of whom was anything like her son. 

One September evening, as she was putting on her coat in the employee locker room, she saw a posting on the community board for a support group for people who were being haunted by what people had by then started referring to as “deadbots,” in spite of Cory Ryan and ArtTelligence Incorporated’s best efforts to avert the brand damage. The paper was wedged between a notice for a coworker’s lost dog and an ad for in-home massage therapy. She tore off a slip with the address for the meetings—in typical fashion, a church basement not far from the hospital—and the next date, a Thursday night at 7pm. She attended, but knew deep down that it wasn’t to make progress against the issue, but rather so she could divert some of the pain and distress without actually having to deactivate the account. 

There were several other regular attendees in the support group – notably, Holly saw echoes of her own circumstances in a person whose wife had prepaid for the service before she passed and who now found themself unable to stop the service even at a continued cost. But there were also more unconventional cases—a young woman who was being plagued by an unsolicited account set up by a malicious ex-boyfriend before his untimely death, and who couldn’t convince AfterLife customer support to shut it down; a sophomore tech ethics major whose school project to study problematic edge cases in the AfterLife code had become a little too real after he had created an account for himself as a test and now couldn’t get his own persona to stop sending him messages.

They shared their stories as they drank sludgy coffee and sat on cold metal folding chairs and watched sleety fall rain sluice down the high slits of the basement windows. She felt for all of these people, but their problems also felt so distant from her own. The others had either never wanted the personas in the first place, or wanted to get to a point where they could let the bots go. But as much as she chafed at the inauthenticity of the messages she wasn’t receiving, she had no desire for them to end. It was a suffering she couldn’t live without. 

C. Ryan: “AfterLife can even be a gift—and not just in the metaphorical sense. For individuals with terminal illnesses, AfterLife can be a way to feel assured that they are leaving their loved ones something to remember them by. With a few up-front payments, users nearing the end of their lives can help train the algorithm themselves, to ensure a high fidelity experience for their loved ones later on. It’s the ultimate present for the people you love, the ability to stay connected with them even after you’re gone.”

[In response to a hand raised in the crowd]

C. Ryan: “You, sir?”

Audience Member: “How much do you estimate this service will cost?”

C. Ryan: “Up front, we’ll try to keep it affordable, to be considerate to those who may already be struggling with medical expenses related to dwindling health. I’ll have to consult with our financial experts, but maybe just a few hundred dollars per month for as long as they want to keep the persona running? After that, it will of course be on the living users to pay for any more time they’d like with their dearly departed.”

Three months passed. Snow in the eaves, flurries that settled lightly and muffled all sound. Holly had paid several rounds of renewal fees, and realized with a sinking feeling that she didn’t know when he would be able to stop paying them. The idea of having to let go of her connection with Steven—to resign herself to a silent rental home, no longer resounding with the sound of keyboard clicks or Steven’s voice calling to her as he arrived home from school—filled her with a sense of dread as iron-heavy and corrosive as the feeling that had gripped her the day she’d found his body. It was worth the money, she thought. Before, she’d felt that she worked a lot more than she ought to at the hospital. Now, she figured it wouldn’t be the worst thing to pick up a second job; it wasn’t like she had anything else going on anyhow.

Six months—technically spring but the long-awaited melt had been swiftly followed by another quick snowfall, a reminder that winter always lasted a little longer than one expected—and ArtTelligence Inc. increased the fees associated with the account. It was March; the company said it was routine to revisit costs at the end of the first quarter of each year, and while AfterLife had been seeing unprecedented success, they needed to ensure that they were making enough revenue to cover all of the patches and feature roll-outs that they had planned to keep the service meeting user needs. Holly had been tempted by an additional package, one that she hadn’t noticed before but that was too good to pass up: voice messages. She still had some voicemails from Steven—telling her that he would be late coming home from school or asking her if he could stay later at his friend Jake’s house to finish their horror movie marathon. The latter was particularly dated, his voice reedy and young; by the time he passed, he and Jake hadn’t spoken in years. The voice messages cost significantly more, as the technology was supposedly more complex, but at least it was cheaper than the even more deluxe live voice chat option. Holly winced as she entered in her credit card info, but still hit the submit payment button. 

Her phone dinged on the table as she came in from picking up the mail, kicking snow off the bottom of her suede slippers with a mix of resignation and dismay. She darted from the door to the kitchen in delighted surprise at the sound—her payment had only just been approved. But sure enough, there it was, a voice message from Steven’s persona.

She walked over to the window that looked out over the shared backyard of the townhome. There was a light dusting of snow on the ground, and it appeared that a hare had wriggled under the fence and darted into the bushes at some point—long, light prints left by swift feet in the powder. She held her phone to her ear as she tried to figure out if the rabbit was still in the bushes, or where it had gone after. There was no movement amongst the branches, no flash of gray pelt or white tail, and no other prints leading out from the other side.

And then, with the resonance of a messenger angel bearing glad tidings, a holiness that bordered on terror, Steven’s voice.

“Hey, I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner. I’m going to be a little late. I’m a little held up by–” Here a digital slurring made Steven’s voice unintelligible for a moment. Then, “I love you, Mom. I miss you. I’m sorry.” Quietly, “I don’t know where to go.”

Just when Holly felt like her heart was about to go totally still in her chest, an unfamiliar cackle rent the tension. “Oh my god, cry about it. Try harder next time, loser.” 

Holly pressed her forehead to the cold pane of glass. It didn’t get easier. How did it never get easier?

Andie Weber is a Minneapolis-based fiction writer, product manager, and surrealist. Her work has previously appeared in Litro US, Overheard, and The Foundationalist. Learn more about her work at anweber.com, or follow her on Substack at andieweber.substack.com.